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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

This newly released recording of Díaz’s 2008 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel is narrated by Tony Award winners Miranda and Olivo. Readers new to or already familiar with the saga of “ghetto nerd” Oscar and his quest to both find love and unravel the secrets of the fukú, the curse that blasted his family from prominence to diaspora during Trujillo’s reign of terror over the Dominican Republic, will be delighted. Miranda infuses quasi-omniscient narrator Yunior with the exuberance required by Díaz’s dexterous prose. Listeners are buoyed through the abrupt hops backward in time and shifts of focus, from Oscar and his family to the Dominican Republic more generally, by Miranda’s ability to bring distinctness to each character in a novel that is littered with extraordinary sights and stories. Equally strong is Olivo’s rendition of Oscar’s fiercely protective, hard elder sister, Lola, whose complex relationship with Beli, their mother, is riddled with anger, sorrow, and a permeating wryness born of that sorrow. The fluidity with which both Miranda and Olivo deliver complicated passages, moving from Spanish to English, didactic to idiomatic, while maintaining a gleeful irreverence throughout, does justice to the lyrical writing of this modern classic. Magan Szwarek